


Hyalus

by Little_Winchester



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Hallucinations, Horror, M/M, Mild Gore, Open to Interpretation, Season/Series 03, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 23:09:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21107507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Little_Winchester/pseuds/Little_Winchester
Summary: Spending a night with a cursed mirror isn't the worst thing Sam's prepared to do to save Dean.





	Hyalus

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2019 Eldritch Bang.
> 
> I was paired with the amazing , [dragonwithatale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonwithatale/pseuds/Dragonwithatale/works?fandom_id=27), who drew the beautiful art for this story.   
Send them love on tumblr too: [trisscar368](https://trisscar368.tumblr.com)  
They beta'd too :D

It has a crack, this mirror that they're guarding. It ridges the top left corner and the rupture’s subtle under the splash of freckles age has granted the mirror, and it's undermined once more by the black iron filigree that shrouds it. Dean had wanted to shoot it; Sam had argued in favor of a cleansing spell.

It didn't matter now.

Dean had pulled a gun on it, back in the warehouse. Had been two seconds away from encrusting his bullet in the liver-spotted glass when Sam's phone had rumbled; Dean had cocked his gun anyway and Sam had stopped him with a rigor mortis grip on his shoulder.

The line had crackled on speakerphone, white noise radio-burble, but the voice had been clear as a knell. Most importantly, it had said it had information on how to get Dean out of his deal - in exchange for the mirror.

Dean had dismissed the speaker as a charlatan with ears in the underworld and had been fully prepared to destroy the mirror anyway, but one look at the raw hope on Sam's face had the words dying in his mouth and any argument fizzling away as Sam agreed.

The speaker said they'd come to their location, and hung up.

They'd shared a look. Forty minutes later, they were in an abandoned factory out by the docks, and set out to make the place habitable for the night.

* * *

Sam squints. "What's that?"

Dean rolls his eyes at him and shakes his head. He pats the rifle as if it were a dog, and his chest puffs out like a peacock's in mating season. "Remington." The stand it’s fastened onto is screwed to the floor. He jerks his chin at an unobtrusive device sat down on a desk that's linked up to wires like a comatose car-crash victim. The wires scale up the walls and across the ceiling like troops of ants, duct taped in place. "And timer. We don't reset it every hour, and  _ bang _ -" he mimes decapitation "-mirror bites it." He grins, like he's four and been given his first racer car or seventeen and about to set a field on fire, baring teeth as he holds up a switch. "Or, we flip this. From anywhere in the room." He looks fat-cat satisfied with his work. "Failsafe, Sammy. Mirror won't be fucking with us if it knows what's good for it."

Sam eyes the slender muzzle. Safety’s off; the subtle drag of the trigger and the gentle crunch of fracturing glass flash unbidden through his mind. "You sure this thing's sound?"

Dean looks thoroughly offended. "I spent two hours on this thing while you were out there making calls. Yes, I'm sure." He scoffs and ambles out. "Help me lug the mirror in, yeah? It's not exactly small."

Sam complies, and nudges away the stray thought that insists it felt a lot more like half an hour than two.

* * *

The mirror feels starkly out of place amongst concrete walls and plastic curtains. Tentative lamplight tints the room yellow, and the odd car drenches it in orange and black shadows.

Sam's setting their food supply on the table. They don't want to leave the room until their correspondent arrives - just in case. He twists slightly to keep the mirror within sight. He can see the reflection of a figure in the hallway; Dean's by his side.

He yanks up his gun, but the doorway's as empty and dark as it was while they were setting the room up. Dean shoots him a look. "Sammy?"

"I," he starts, turns back to the mirror. It's long, full length; seems molded to Sam's frame. He can hear his heart, rattling against his ribcage."I thought I saw someone in the mirror."

They're staring at it now. They've got two cameras set up; one hung high up on the wall, untouchable without a ladder, and the other perched on a tripod. The fifteen deaths linked to the mirror cling to it like the barest shadow of drooping puppets, and it's clear what was holding the strings.

* * *

The smoke whorls around Sam's fingers; its too-familiar acrid stench chokes him. It trickles into his nose and gasping mouth.

He falls to his knees; they'll bruise, later.

And-

He can't breathe.

He can't breathe and this thick black smoke obscures everything but this slender, unscarred hand in front of him, nails painted electric blue.

"Jess?" He croaks. Distantly, he can feel another hand on his face, the gentle scrape of a calloused thumb on his cheek. Thundercloud-tipped fingers mirror the unseen action, soft and steady.

"Sam."

Sam ignores it. It's too whiskey-rough, too deep. "Jess?" He tries. He can't see her through the smoke, and it's clogging up his throat, his lungs. They ache, as if someone had thrown a wrench in their clockwork.

"Sam!"

The side of his face stings. He blinks; the smoke is gone, any trace of it vanished .

So is Jess.

Dean's kneeling in front of him, close enough that his breath steams on Sam's face. His eyes are wide, unhinged, and his eyebrows are drawn up together and his hand shakes as he runs it through his hair. 

"What's going on?" Sam asks. His stomach lurches like he's falling and his hands come up to grip Dean's forearms. "Dean?"

Dean shakes his head, like he's clearing cobwebs. "You were hallucinating." He glances at the mirror. "You stopped breathing."

* * *

The mirror is clearly a lot stronger than expected; Sam has pointedly refused to comment on that.

Sam's hands shake as he cleans out his Taurus, as he lays it out in a neat file next to his glittering knives, and it feels like something in Dean cracks as he watches his little brother shiver.

"It's a good thing that we're together," Dean remarks, leaning forwards in his chair.

Sam's eyes snap up; his hands keep working. He's dismantling his Beretta, fingers moving with lethal fluidity even as tremors course through them. 

Dean clicks his tongue. "All those people died alone, right?" He barely waits for Sam to nod before continuing. "We can pull each other back. It can't take us both at the same time, and I pulled you out of the hallucination.” 

"You don't know that it can't affect us both simultaneously." Sam looks uncertain, puppy-lost. He shifts in his tilting chair, winces as it creaks. His eyes flit towards the mirror, jump straight back to Dean as if scared of looking at it for too long. 

Dean shrugs dismissively. Sam scowls, but his shoulders break their line of tension.  _ See, Sammy? Big brother's not scared. You don't have to be either. _

"I just want to make sure we don't underestimate this thing," Sam says finally.

Dean passes by him to grab a beer and trails his hands over his arm, squeezes his shoulder. "We'll be fine." 

* * *

They decide on a poker game; not much in the pot, just a guitar pick a couple of Mars bars. Dean throws in a condom with a flirty wink, and Sam rolls his eyes but murmurs that there's lube in his duffle bag. It's lazy and quiet, both brothers offering advice and nitpicking the other's tells.

Sam wins the first round. Dean groans and flicks their meager bounty towards Sam, who eyes the pick and pockets it before splitting a bar with Dean. He munches on it as he rifles through their mini fridge for a couple of beers. He opens both and passes one to Sam. They half-heartedly set up another game, but Sam's yawning has Dean ending it. 

"Get some sleep," he orders gently.

Sam glowers, risks a glance at the mirror. "What if you start hallucinating, huh? What then?" He means to sound stern, Dean thinks, and his worry is palpable, but the effect is ruined by his adorably sleepy yawn halfway through. 

"I'll be fine," Dean promises. He offers a cocky grin. "That thing ain't got nothing on me, and I know what to expect."

Sam shakes his head. Stubborn as a mule; always has been. "You didn't live it, Dean. I'm not leaving you against that thing on your own."

Sam lasts twenty minutes before he falls asleep on his laptop, face smushed by the keyboard. Dean lifts his head carefully and shoves the laptop away. He stuffs a flannel under Sam's head, shuts the laptop down.

"I'll stay up with you, Dean," he mocks. Snorts. "Kid was practically falling asleep during the game, was a miracle he won the first round." He shakes his head; he’s talking to himself to make up for the lack of Sam-chatter and background TV-noise. Three months left and he’s going senile over a  _ mirror _ .

He straps down the rifle further and fiddles with the timer for a while before reaching for his gun; a strip-down and cleaning won't hurt. 

There's another hand already on the barrel, soft and pale and Dean looks up to see - 

"Mom?" His voice cracks, just a little.

She's standing right behind the table, clad in a plain white night dress and barefoot. She smiles at him. One of her incisors is chipped. "It's been a while," she says, and when she opens her arms for a hug, Dean can't help but push the table aside and curl himself into her embrace. Cold fingers stroke his nape soothingly, and after what could have been an eternity she pushes him back gently. "Let me see my boy," Mary says and Dean beams at her through the tears.

She sighs. "You look like a soldier," she says, and she's still smiling, and Dean can't make out what she's thinking. She peers at him, tilts her head to the side, bird-like. Dean catches a whiff of lemon and something else, something that makes his heart skip a beat before he forgets it entirely. Her smile seems too large for her face. "Just your father's obedient little soldier, aren't you?" She says, with her hands clamped around Dean's arms and her smile sunshine-bright. Dean feels his blood run cold.

"No," he whispers. Her nails are digging into his forearm, dragging up tiny beads of blood, but he doesn't jerk away. He feels like he should. He forgets why he should.

There's a crack in her tooth, the one missing a corner. She steps closer. "You're all grown up," she says, and the tooth sunders and falls to the ground, root, nerves, blood and all. "You're a fully-fledged killer now, aren't you?" She says. 

"Mom," he whispers, horrified. "No, that that ain't me, I'm trying-"

Teeth spill from her mouth, more than there should be and there's blood trailing down her chin, staining her nightgown black. She steps forwards and he steps back and teeth crunch under her bare feet like leaves. She's still smiling, and the scent of lemon's gone, replaced fully by the stench of something decomposing. Her blonde hair has blackened, turned frail and falling from her scalp in whispering tufts. Wasn’t it like this from the beginning?

Her smile is too-wide and blackstained when she says, "I gave birth to a  _ monster _ ."

He shoves himself away from her, then, and knocks himself into a table. His hands are wet, and he doesn't know if its his own blood or hers.

He thinks he yells at her, in this minute of forgetting, of scraping this encounter off the ridges of his skull. His yell rattles the windows, he thinks, fractures something within him too, and-

He's in the middle of the room, looking at himself in the mirror. Shadows fall like gauze over his eyes. In this splintered lamplight, they could almost be black.

"Dean?" Sam asks groggily. He nods towards the timer, wiping sleep from his eyes. "Did you, uh-"

Sam looks gaunt, pale suddenly, and it takes Dean a moment to realize why.

Arranged in a neat circle around Sam are his knives and guns, muzzles and blades all pointed towards him. Sam's looking at it like its a mirage, blinking owlishly at his weapons like they'll be gone the next time he opens his eyes.

It's only then that Dean registers another, smaller ring of knives; this one curves around his feet.

"Fuck!" He kicks at the blades, jostles them out of their perfect formation. "Shit!" He screams, hurls the nearest object - an unopened beer bottle - at the wall. It shatters on impact and stains the wall, forms a puddle on the floor. Sam still hasn't moved, and his fear is lethargic in manifesting itself.

"What the  _ hell _ ," Sam finally chokes out, and Dean doesn't have an answer. He scans the room, as if searching for an alternative answer, something that explains what has happened without drawing in that _ fucking mirror _ .

Dean picks up the first dagger he sees and makes for the mirror. Sam - still dazed, half under the cobwebs of sleep, so unlike his brother who's usually up and alert at the barest twitch, the softest padding of feet in their room - calls out to him. 

"Don't," he pleads. He stands up, sways, and what stops Dean is that it looks like his little brother is about to topple over. He glares at the mirror, it’s time-darkened frame and his reflection within it, but turns in time to catch his brother. He drags him over to a chair - not the one he was sitting in, not with all the knives and guns still circling it like a murder of crows, eager for carrion. Once his brother's no longer in immediate danger of keeling over, he scatters the daggers and places the guns on the table.

Sam's eating. He's reset the timer and looks marginally better than he did when we woke up though he's telegraphing his movements to the point that he wouldn't last half a minute in a fight. 

"We could watch the tapes," he says ponderously. Sam takes another glacial bite out of his apple and turns to face the camera set up on the tripod. In the half light, Dean imagines they turn yellow for a second. He shudders, but he keeps quiet as he grabs the camera and passes is to Sam. Sam's booting up his laptop, and it's bone-white glow makes Sam look like a corpse

Could his brother really be-

He glances at the mirror. It's innocuous, now, seems to be blending in with the tarp and raw concrete.

Sam's got the tape rolling. He moves the scrubber forwards until there's a little more than an hour of footage left, increases the speed and presses play. Dean watches them both flit backwards and forwards, gestures fleeting and blurry.

"Wait," Sam says suddenly. His brow's all knitted together, and he's squinting at the screen as he presses the spacebar. He sets the speed to a normal pace and jerks the scrubber back minutely. He presses play, and Dean gets to watch a low-quality version of himself offer Sam some pills and a bottle and Sam taking them and washing them down with beer. Sam taps the spacebar.

"I don't remember that," Sam says. He's absentmindedly toying with the edge of the table, and Dean vaguely registers that he’s going to end up with splinters all over his hands. 

"I don't either." It scares him, this admission, and it comes out in the form of rage. He slams his fist down on the table and apologises for Sam's flinch with a glance. He sighs. "Move it forward," he says eventually. "I want to see what happens next."

Sam silently complies.

The Dean in the screen loads all their guns before arranging the weapons around a sleeping Sam, almost lovingly. He repeats the same motions, placing his own knives mechanically in a ring before stepping inside of it, and then staring at the mirror absently. There's still half an hour left of footage, but Dean thinks they've watched enough.

Dean finds himself shaking his head. "That's not what happened." He punches the table again, knows he has to look completely unhinged to this listless, drowsy Sam and finds that he doesn't care. "Fuck, I talked to- I saw Mom," he admits, voice ragged. The memory cracks inside him like a volcano-hewn geode, scraping him with its serrated insides.

Sam stills, breathing stark and heavy in the otherwise silent room. "Yeah?" He encourages. His eyes still look weary, dull. He’s staring at this tiny black spider as it scuttles across the desk as if held the key to the universe.

"It was bad." He disconnects the camera and sets it back up on the tripod. Glances at Sam; still entranced. "I don't want to talk about it."

Behind him, his brother says nothing, does nothing at all, except turn away from the scurrying spider to peer at himself curiously, detachedly, in the mirror, like a failed experiment he can't wait to take apart.

* * *

It takes Sam another forty minutes to come down fully from the pills. Dean spends them all pacing.

"The call was bullshit," Dean snarls. "And you know it. Don't try to kid yourself. Planting everything you want right in your lap, just like that? Come on. That doesn't happen to us. And if it does, it's because it's a  _ trap _ . We should just destroy the mirror and move on."

Sam's nostrils flare. " You're going to be gone in three months, and you've been shooting all our leads down since you made the damn deal." He stands up abruptly, knocking the chair to the ground. He's moved on to shouting now, red in the face. "Do you ever stop to think about the rest of us? About Bobby and Ellen and Jo and- and  _ me? _ " Sam scoffed. "If you're so eager to leave us all behind, why stick with me, huh?” He laughs bitterly. “Why not just pull the trigger now?”

“Fuck you, Sam,” Dean growls. Sam’s all up in his space, towering over him, and he shoves him back. “You know that’s not what it’s like.”

“No? Enlighten me, Dean, ‘cause right now, I have _ no fucking clue _ what it’s like!” Sam yells. His eyes are white now, completely. 

Dean turns away, picks up the switch. “This ends now.” His expression’s thunderous, carved from stone as he ignores how the knives on the desks are shuddering, trembling even though there’s no one touching them.

Sam reaches forward, furious - and sags. “If there’s even a chance this could save you, I have to take it,” Sam says quietly, and he sounds so worn down, so  _ broken _ \- it cracks Dean’s resolve. “Just until morning, okay?” Sam asks, voice stronger now, and Dean can still see the vestiges in his anger in his clenched fists, in how his eyes avoid Dean. The room’s quiet once again, and he notices his weapons have stopped shaking.

“Until morning,” Dean accedes. It feels strangely like a vow.

* * *

They reach for each other while they're still seething, while their blood still magnesium-crackles through them and they're still on edge from the adrenaline spikes and crash.

Sam's hands look poison-blood black as Dean tears his shirt off. Sam snarls, gives as good as he gets and the sound of ripping fabric ruptures the thick silence that settles naturally in the room. Sam curses at him and Dean grips his jaw, works his brother's lips between his teeth until they're puffy and red and bleeding in the corner. Dean pushes again, shoves his tongue in Sam's mouth and Sam groans into his, winds his hand around Dean's hip and grinds them together. The pressure feels shocky, raw, and Dean shoves a hand between them to grind down on Sam's crotch. Sam tugs at Dean's belt, uncoils it and shoves it down. He finds sutures he stitched down the side of Dean's thigh, presses against them until he can feel blood burbling and Dean snarls at him and bites his neck hard enough to shake him loose. 

Sam's back ends up pressed to the mirror, scapulae scraping it with each movement. He slams his palm on it and thunks his head against the glass. He can see the muzzle of the Remington, the contours of its chamber and stock, but everything else seems to be drowning in black, inky, spreading black, swallowing everything up except for this little oasis, the hot push of Dean's hands on his body and the cold surface of the mirror at his back. He feels like he could sink right into it. He groans, bares his throat for Dean as he works fingers with too-little lube inside of him, coaxes gasps and shudders from him as he clings to Dean, his arms and muscled shoulders and his fattened dick. He tugs at the amulet, brings his brother closer to nibble at the edge of his mouth as Dean pants, to kiss him and plaster them together, stain them both with midnight sweat and dribbling precome and spit.

The first push is gritty; Sam hisses into Dean's neck gnaws on it and breaks skin while biting purple bruises down the blue suggestion of his jugular. Dean shoves and pummels, pulls him fully on his dick before turning Sam around and ramming back in. Sam groans, pets Dean's hair, traces his ear and thumping carotid as he watches everything but them succumb to the gnawing darkness.

Sam's veins look black in the shredded moonlight. Dean snarls, grabs Sam's hair and yanks it back, rakes his nails down Sam's chest, up over his iliac crest and claw-curls his fingers there, drags him back as he drives his hips forward. Sam keens, spreads his legs for Dean and palms his own cock roughly. He catches Sam's eyes in the mirror, ignores how one seems to flicker yellow while the other goes completely white at times. He remembers to forget that his own seem to gleam like onyx in this dead light, too. He snarls, slams his hips forwards so that Sam's end up ground against the mirror, thick cock trapped between skin and glass and streaking the mirror. Sam shoves back and the iron filigree curtaining the glass seems to be melting, trickling down until Dean realizes he's watching tiny black spiders crawl down the wrought iron detail. He doesn't know if it's real and  _ he doesn't fucking care _ . 

The mirror's cloudy in some places, foggy with condensed sweat and reality seems to tug at those places too, darkness infusing them as Dean presses sooty bruises into Sam's skin, as Sam's fists pound on the glass and he growls  _ more _ .

* * *

They're holding guns to each other's faces.

Sam's gun is digging into Dean's forehead and the muzzle of Dean's is corpse-cold under Sam's chin.

Sam's eyes flare yellow-

"Dean?" He sounds scared, the way he hasn't since he was six and bunny-jumped to avoid the dark gap between his bed and the floor.

Dean feels it; the grooves of the runes he cut into the grip, the weight of it in his hand.

He feels bile crawl up his throat.

He lowers the gun and drops it. He's not quite aware of when Sam did the same.

"We're fine," Dean says. Sam’s hands are trembling. He glances at the mirror and Dean thinks about breaking his promise. His breath puffs white. He thinks of the fear in Sam’s eyes when he found out about the deal. "We're fine."

The lie tastes even worse than the bile.

* * *

Ropes dig into Sam's chest and wrists, press him down onto a solid wooden chair. The air's muggy and thick, and he can hear off-tune howls in the distance.

Dean's beside him. "Gotta keep moving, Sammy," he murmurs, Colt at the ready. Sam wants to point out his bindings but his throat seems to be clogged up with lead and Dean's ignoring his pitiful attempts to speak.

A few minutes pass. He can hear the howling get louder, closer, and he’s writhing in the ropes, trying to dislodge them somehow as his brother stares into the undefined distance.

"This is it," Dean says grimly. He glares at the rough-hewn shadows between the trees, and Sam tries to look for splinters in the wood but the chair's smooth now, metal, and he can't do a damn thing.

He watches, immobile and helpless as the hounds crawl out of the inky forest. They're at a crossroads and the hounds advance from all sides, fur matted and glistening in the starlight. Their whines make Sam's hair spine prickle, and Sam groans pitifully, pleadingly, for Dean to release him so he can fight by his side, so he has a chance at not losing Dean-

The first one to lunge strikes like black lightning, more of a blurry silhouette than an actual form. He can see that in all of them, how their forms seem unwilling to remain solid permanently and often diffuse into rising plumes of black that meld back into their huge charcoal bodies momentarily.

The sound of the shot reverberates in Sam's skull, rattles his bones. The hound's a heap of bones and fur and noxious smoke, and it’s as dead as something that was never alive can be. Dean grins at him, feral, his face cast in shadows so that his eyes, his teeth, the skin beneath his cheekbones all look black. "End of the line," he rasps, and that's when the rest of them pounce.

His brother gets taken down in a flurry of coarse fur and maws crammed with shark teeth, all while Sam screams in his binding, wrests against them so brutally that he can feel his shoulder dislocating but the ropes won't give. He has a front row seat to Dean's death, has to watch glinting saber teeth and pitch claws rend his brother's body, and anytime he thinks of closing his eyes, of turning his head to avoid the carnage Dean screams his name, begs him to not leave him alone.

The tears in Sam's eyes make everything blurry, but he can still tell when the hellhounds leave. He calls his brother's name, more as a reflex than out of any real hope.

The chair's gone; rope too, and he crawls over to Dean's body, cradles him in his hands and won't stop to think about how fucked up it is that he's holding on to his brother's corpse, and he's crying and Dean's absence  _ hurts _ .

* * *

Sam's sat down on a chair, head bent like a parishioner. He's looking at something he's turning over in his hands, and he doesn't look up as Dean approaches him.

"Sam?" He croaks. The source of light is weak and seems to be somewhere behind Sam, because his silhouette glows.

He can see the shadow of a smile, but Sam still doesn't look at him. He walks closer. The light source seems to be moving too, and away, because no matter how much Dean approaches, the details on Sam are still dark-blurred. He can see he's wearing a suit, black, and Dean frowns because it's usually him pushing for the FBI get-ups.

"Hey," Sam says, snapping his head up once Dean's next to him. 

His eyes shine Azazel-yellow. 

"Get out of him, you bastard," Dean seethes, but Sam - not Sam,  _ Azazel _ \- just laughs. He stands up, unfolding like an origami crane and Dean fights the urge to back away. 

"There's no one in me, Dean," not-Sam rumbles. His fingers come up to trace Dean's cheekbone, and Dean bares his teeth. Sam smiles back. “It’s just plain old me.”

“Sam isn’t evil,” Dean argues. “He would  _ never- _ ”

Sam shakes his head. His smile is condescending, his eyes judgemental and cold. “Not with you in the way, that’s for sure.” He tips his head to a side, and Dean gets streamrolled with the memory of Mary doing the exact same thing. He shudders, and Sam laughs quietly. “Can you remember what it was like to lose me? I’m going to be like that, only so much worse because I have  _ all of hell _ pushing me to join them.”

There’s cold creeping up Dean’s spine, a weird pressure clinging to his ribs as Sam carries on. “I mean, I always had the potential.” He shrugs, faux-humble smiles. “Had the right to the throne, too, after last year’s battle royale.” Dean flinches; it’s not something he wants to remember. He thinks, viciously even after all this time, that he’d rip that moment from time itself, if he could. 

Sam’s teeth diamond-glitter. “This is what I’m going to become, Dean.”

He can’t. He runs.

The hallway’s narrow and winding, and the pounding of his boots echoes, thrums in his ears like a drum, like the whip-crack sound of a bullet firing. He can see a light, dim and dismal, and he  _ knows _ he has to reach the source.

A reflective sheen webs along the walls, subtle between the coarse black. He can see shards of Sam, can see him smiling with a cruel, thorny crown on his head.

Sam’s reflection cracks. “You can’t stop this,” he hisses, his tongue snake-split when it slips out to flick at his lips. “And I don’t need you anymore.”

With that, the corridor shudders. It caves inwards, like a vacuum-empty air tank succumbing to external pressure and Dean barrels onwards. The light just around the corner, he’s sure of it, has never been more certain of anything than this as he scrambles towards the bend, as he shoves ineffectually at the converging stone walls- 

He’s through. He collapses, gives himself a couple of seconds to catch his breath before he stands up.

The room is space-void black and vast as the universe and its undiluted emptiness and loneliness bear down on him, feel like a mære squirming on his chest, cracking his ribs and blowing rancid breath in his face.

The light’s behind him; the weight vanishes.

Aureoled in honey-soft sunshine; shoulders don't-look-at-me hunched. 

Hazel eyes.  _ Sam _ .

His face collapses in relief once he sees Dean, and Dean drags him into a hug, buries his face in the hollow between Sam's throat and collarbone.  _ Real _ .

* * *

Sam bunches up the material of his brother’s jacket. He can smell gun oil and the familiar scent of Old Spice Dean adopted when he was seventeen, and the thumping of his heart against Sam’s own ribs, feel his chest expand on a breath like a bubble and deflate.  _ Alive _ .

He doesn’t think Dean has hugged him this long since - since he  _ died _ , but he’d let Dean hold him now until their hearts calcified. He’s warm, infusing Sam with a gentle heat he thought he’d lost when he realized Dean had sold his soul.

_ Real _ .

* * *

_ Wait. _

* * *

The whisper-thud of boots on cement; the quiet grandfather-clock-tick of a drawn trigger.

* * *

He’s standing in front of the mirror. Something moves; he can see a flicker along the crack as blood blooms, carnation-red, between his ribs.

  
  



End file.
